[Is oral care for dysphagic patients wasted time? A narrative review on the effects of oral care on pneumonia risk and guidelines for an effective and structured approach].

Aspiration pneumonia is a common cause of death in dysphagia patients. In this review, we investigate whether a structured oral care approach can help to reduce pneumonia risk in dysphagic patients. In addition, guidelines for the implementation of oral care on the basis of the analyzed studies are presented.

A systematic review on production and comprehension of linguistic prosody in people with acquired language and communication disorders resulting from unilateral brain lesions.

Background: Prosody serves central functions in language processing including linguistic functions (linguistic prosody), like structuring the speech signal. Impairments in production and comprehension of linguistic prosody have been described for persons with unilateral right (RHDP) or left hemisphere damage (LHDP). However, reported results differ with respect to the characteristics and severities of these impairments AIMS: We conducted a systematic literature review focusing on production and comprehension of linguistic prosody at the prosody-syntax interface (i.

Measuring communication as a core outcome in aphasia trials: Results of the ROMA-2 international core outcome set development meeting.

Background: Evidence-based recommendations for a core outcome set (COS; minimum set of outcomes) for aphasia treatment research have been developed (the Research Outcome Measurement in Aphasia-ROMA, COS). Five recommended core outcome constructs: communication, language, quality of life, emotional well-being and patient-reported satisfaction/impact of treatment, were identified through three international consensus studies. Constructs were paired with outcome measurement instruments (OMIs) during an international consensus meeting (ROMA-1).

Production and Comprehension of Prosodic Boundary Marking in Persons With Unilateral Brain Lesions.

Purpose: Persons with unilateral brain damage in the right hemisphere (RH) or left hemisphere (LH) show limitations in processing linguistic prosody, with yet inconclusive results on their ability to process prosodically marked structural boundaries for syntactic ambiguity resolution. We aimed at systematically investigating production and comprehension of three prosodic cues ( range, final lengthening, and pause) at structural boundaries in coordinate sequences in participants with right hemisphere brain damage (RHDP) and participants with left hemisphere brain damage (LHDP).

Method: Twenty RHDP and 15 LHDP participated in our study.

Individual Differences in Early Disambiguation of Prosodic Grouping.

Prosodic cues help to disambiguate incoming information in spoken language perception. In structurally ambiguous coordinate utterances, such as three-name sequences, the intended grouping is marked by three prosodic cues: F0-range, final lengthening, and pause. To indicate that the first two names are grouped together, speakers typically weaken the durational and tonal cues on the first name whereas they are strengthened on the second name, compared with a structure without internal grouping.

Evaluating Models of Gesture and Speech Production for People With Aphasia.

People with aphasia use gestures not only to communicate relevant content but also to compensate for their verbal limitations. The Sketch Model (De Ruiter, 2000) assumes a flexible relationship between gesture and speech with the possibility of a compensatory use of the two modalities. In the successor of the Sketch Model, the AR-Sketch Model (De Ruiter, 2017), the relationship between iconic gestures and speech is no longer assumed to be flexible and compensatory, but instead iconic gestures are assumed to express information that is redundant to speech.

The Production of Gesture and Speech by People With Aphasia: Influence of Communicative Constraints.

Purpose People with aphasia (PWA) use different kinds of gesture spontaneously when they communicate. Although there is evidence that the nature of the communicative task influences the linguistic performance of PWA, so far little is known about the influence of the communicative task on the production of gestures by PWA. We aimed to investigate the influence of varying communicative constraints on the production of gesture and spoken expression by PWA in comparison to persons without language impairment.

How Much Information Do People With Aphasia Convey via Gesture?

Purpose: People with aphasia (PWA) face significant challenges in verbally expressing their communicative intentions. Different types of gestures are produced spontaneously by PWA, and a potentially compensatory function of these gestures has been discussed. The current study aimed to investigate how much information PWA communicate through 3 types of gesture and the communicative effectiveness of such gestures.